Sunday, April 12, 2015

Addendum to Friday's Blog: The USS Grunion

After blogging about the history of
submarines for National Submarine Day,
I happened to pick up a 2008 issue of Reader’s Digest (January)in the Friends of the Library sale room at my
local library. After reading the article “Mystery at Sea”, I felt compelled to research the USS
Grunion.

In 1942, Jim Abele had dinner with his wife and 3 sons in Groton CT. They
went home, and he sailed away on the USS Grunion, which he commanded,
without so much as a goodbye because the operation was deemed “top secret”. He
and 69 other crew members never returned. Sixty years later those three young
boys—old now—set out to find their father and bring closure to the families of
the others. Despite impossible odds, on August 16, 2006, ten miles northeast of
Kiska in the Aleutian Islands, the
brothers found their father’s final resting place.